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Opening up arenas for dialogues for culture and community needs

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Authors: Czarecah Oropilla, Flora Brégeon, Valentina Delconte

Czarecah Oropilla (Eya), postdoctoral fellow from the University of Western Norway, shares her experience during the 2024 edition of the SciCultureD intensive course held in Valletta, and how the courses’ take-aways influenced her work practices.

Eya – or Teacher Eya in the professional world – has a professional experience in edutainment, and obtained a PhD in Bildung and Pedagogical Practices from the University of Western Norway (HVL), where she is also now a postdoctoral fellow. She is currently involved in many collaborative research projects impacting the field of early childhood education and care, such as the EX-PED-LAB (Explorations and Pedagogical Innovations Laboratory), the One Ocean Project, among other initiatives of the Kindergarten Knowledge Centre for SYstemic Research on Diversity and Sustainable Futures (KINDknow Centre). 

Eya’s work is now focussing on creative collaborations with different actors in co-creating pedagogical innovations in early childhood.

What are her take-aways from the Course? Discover below!

-What was your favourite/surprising part of the course? And the most challenging one for you?

Eya: ‘I enjoyed the amalgamation of seemingly different topics and activities that the course offered, all of which resonated with my advocacies. It was so good to have been able to reflect every day through the photos we’ve taken. I enjoy taking photos myself – I see them as collected memories frozen in time.

The most challenging part of the week for me was the necessary friction among different collaborators.’

Eya’s photolog

I believe the double diamond methodology is also helpful here in that we are allowed and encouraged to try new iterations after the dialogues and the various activities presented.

‘I say it is necessary because I believe that it is in these moments of tension, uncertainties, and disagreements where truly exciting and creative outputs come about. This is a space representing expertise and strengths that collide. While this collision is the most challenging part of collaborating, it is also crucial to being able to find negotiated solutions. I believe the double diamond methodology is also helpful here in that we are allowed and encouraged to try new iterations after the dialogues and the various activities presented. I have worked with the double diamond methodology in workshops before, and I find that being comfortable with being uncomfortable is an important part of the collaborative process.

-In your final performance, you and your group decided to immerse the audience in a festival of flavours to encourage community making and connection to a place: can you describe your performance, some of the elements in it and their meaning? What inspired you?

Eya: ‘Our final performance had many rounds of revisions. Each iteration that came about came from each group member’s strengths and insights. Coming from an observer’s perspective, it could have been perceived as a chaotic process because we had tensions, disagreements, and uncertainties. 

One of the stations of the Festival 'Spicing Up Malta'.

‘We had so many rounds of discussions revisiting our problem statement and our main objectives for putting together the solution. We struggled in our position as solution providers as all of us were “outsiders” and merely tourists in a place where we wanted to effect change. In the end, our group agreed that we did not want to present a specific solution that fulfills our personal interests.’

Instead, we chose to create a place or an experience to open up an arena to inspire, discover, and discuss possibilities for solutions. We did this by offering a spice festival called “Spicing Up Malta.”

 

Instead, we chose to create a place or an experience to open up an arena to inspire, discover, and discuss possibilities for solutions. We did this by offering a spice festival called “Spicing Up Malta.” Through this festival, we wanted to honour and highlight the indigenous wisdom of the locals through their traditional practices using the endemic flora and fauna of Malta. We wanted to have meaningful conversations with the locals and also different actors, such as immigrants, to determine their needs and their thoughts. At the same time, we also wanted to incorporate creative methods as a recognition that not everyone wanted to merely hang around and talk. We recognized that each person would want to communicate their needs and thoughts in different ways.

As such, we also prepared conversation menus to start the conversations. We sought to give them the opportunity to propose solutions themselves through many different media–they could choose to draw, create something, write poetry, dance, sing, etc. Each group in the festival ended up choosing to do something creative within 10 minutes of the final presentation‘.

Eya (bottom left) and her team during the SciCultureD intensive Course 2024.

- How do you think the transdisciplinary approach and the artistic tools will impact your work/activities?

Eya: ‘Involving children and their families in deeper conversations and sensory experiences of the sea is something that my research centre deems very important. It enhances learning by providing a tangible context for marine biology and environmental science, fosters critical thinking, and promotes emotional connections to nature. Such experiences strengthen intergenerational family bonds, and improve mental health. They also instill environmental stewardship, leading to responsible behavior and community involvement. Additionally, understanding the cultural and historical significance of the sea fosters respect for indigenous knowledge and cultural diversity.’

 As part of KINDknow’s One Ocean project, Eya’s team sought to find playful ways to bring the ocean into an event at the children’s science museum in Bergen (VilVite), It was a collaborative effort between Inga Margrethe Fagerbakke, PhD candidate, Czarecah Oropilla, the research director Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Charlotte Tonheim and Sabine Haake (employees at VilVite), as well as supporting departments at the HVL, the HVL LæringsLab, to put together an indoor sensory and playful experience for children and their families.

Each game  aimed to engage with children and their parents in sensory experiences and conversations of artefacts by the sea.

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